[Trotter]

He has publicly stated that he wants to abolish certain programs and departments such as the Department of Education which would suggest reducing the size of the federal government. He's also made other statements supporting privitization of most programs such as renewable energy, retirement plans, and social security. By privitizing it eliminates the need/desire for oversite and government funded programs which would generally suggest growing the government. And McCain has routinely voted for bills that prefered privitization versus government control.

All of those ideas in theory indicates his desire to keep government small and possibly reduce it to some degree. That's in contrast to Obama's plan which he blatantly says he wants to grow government. He doesn't come right out and say it but by pledging to increase funding and creating new grants for renewable energies, and his quest to create additional regulartory bodies for the financial sector, that will no doubt doubt grow the government. It's like I said before Obama is crafty as to how he word things. You just have to read between the lines. McCain is very obvious and has gone on the record with ideas to diminish government.

That still doesn't change the fact I won't be voting for either.

[speakeasy]

(09-23-2008 01:41 AM)Trotter Wrote:  

He has publicly stated that he wants to abolish certain programs and departments such as the Department of Education which would suggest reducing the size of the federal government. He's also made other statements supporting privitization of most programs such as renewable energy, retirement plans, and social security. By privitizing it eliminates the need/desire for oversite and government funded programs which would generally suggest growing the government. And McCain has routinely voted for bills that prefered privitization versus government control.

Well, we are all entitled to our political viewpoints and you are probably as entrenched in your world view as I am in mine. I have to say though that the getting rid of the Department of Education thing has been talked about since the days of Reagan and not one of them has done it. Plus they'd have to get such through congress and there's no way it would happen. It would be like trying to abolish abortion with a presidential action. Ain't happening. I don't know how anyone looking at the financial turmoil we're seeing can argue for privatizing social security. There's a reason it's called social security. The market is not secure, which is why any prospectus tells in plain english "past performance is no guarantee of future returns." I think an idea society let's the free market do its thing and innovate, create jobs and wealth for the country, but also has reasonable safety nets, so that we don't have veterans living on the street and the elderly eating cat food. Most thing things we deride as "entitlements" or "socialism" is considered perfectly normal in the rest of the western world. I don't think anyone could call Japan a socialist country, I mean hell they have arguably beat us at the capitalist game, but at the same time, they aren't going to let one of their citizens die of something completely preventable just because that person couldn't afford health insurance. I think the type of libertarian society that that some republicans and obvious Libertarians(with a capital "L") want would damn near return us to the type of society we had at the turn of the century, which is scary to me. An idea society finds a good balance between capitalist innovation and efficiency and socialist safety nets. Too much of either in the extreme is detrimental. I think there are many examples where such is the case around the world.

[broken]

(09-21-2008 05:35 AM)Bernie Wrote:  

No broken, not mad. Just amazed at how a young college grad would go about selecting who they'll vote for.

I would hope more logic and self education would be involved.

LOL @ a young college grad.

[broken]

(09-23-2008 02:07 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  

Well, we are all entitled to our political viewpoints and you are probably as entrenched in your world view as I am in mine. I have to say though that the getting rid of the Department of Education thing has been talked about since the days of Reagan and not one of them has done it.

What I don't get is why they even think that getting rid of it is a good idea?

Damn near all of the libertarian/republican/conservative/neo-cons ideas are just ass-backwards.

Privatise gain and socialize loss.

[speakeasy]

(09-23-2008 05:49 PM)broken Wrote:  

(09-23-2008 02:07 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  

Well, we are all entitled to our political viewpoints and you are probably as entrenched in your world view as I am in mine. I have to say though that the getting rid of the Department of Education thing has been talked about since the days of Reagan and not one of them has done it.

What I don't get is why they even think that getting rid of it is a good idea?

Damn near all of the libertarian/republican/conservative/neo-cons ideas are just ass-backwards.

Privatise gain and socialize loss.

They somehow are under the illusion that a completely unregulated society would be a better one. But you can go back in history and find many "unregulated" societies that weren't places you'd want to live. If there was no more public education, then half the nation's kids wouldn't have an education, how many people could afford to send their kids to private school? Things would be like they were in the 1800s. A bunch of poor, uneducated people working like slaves with a small elite class. There are lots of countries which are very unregulated with little or no public education, I can think of many in sub-saharan Africa. Ensuring that every kid has an education is an investment in the future prosperity of your country. For the wealthy, the motivation is simply selfish, "I made my millions and I don't want ANY of it redistributed in any way." But why people in the middle class would buy into this, I don't know. A libertarian society would gut the middle class and stifle upward mobility.

[Trotter]

You hit the nail on the head. McCain is so pro privitization that it almost makes me sick. He's been doing a lot of back peddling recently on his privitizing stance because of the recent economic crisis. Yet again I'm not pro regulation either because I'm always about big brother looking over my shoulder.

[Bernie]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgctSIL8Lhs

Watch it. It's about Congress' response to the banking crisis 3 years ago...

[TheMoonMonst3r]

I am extremely pleased at the outcome of this election

[speakeasy]

(11-19-2008 03:00 AM)TheMoonMonst3r Wrote:  

I am extremely pleased at the outcome of this election

Yeah, if for any reason so I won't be biting my nails every night worried that McCain wouldn't wake up one morning and we'd turn on the news and find out Palin is now leader of the free world. That reason alone was enough to vote for Obama.

[Roosh]

Is anyone feeling buyer's remorse yet from obama. His cabinet picks are hardly about change. I know i know he hasnt even taken power yet, but i'm disappointed so far.

[speakeasy]

(11-24-2008 01:33 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

Is anyone feeling buyer's remorse yet from obama. His cabinet picks are hardly about change. I know i know he hasnt even taken power yet, but i'm disappointed so far.

I'm feeling buyers remorse in some ways, but not so much for his cabinet picks. I'm feeling disappointed that so far his economic plans seem to be little more than printing ever more money out of thin air to hand out in corporate welfare. When I heard him say he doesn't care about the deficit and to just print whatever money we have to in order to "rescue" the economy, my heart sank. Not that I was expecting him to put us back on the gold standard, but to anyone who believes in fiscal restraint, this is disheartening. McCain wouldn't have been much better and because of Palin, he was not an option for me.

[mojodrew]

buyer's remorse? give the guy a break, he just got done with the longest campaign ever and is staring at two wars and an economic recession. in the big picture, i get the sense that obama is gonna delegate alot of his economic policymaking to his advisers like the uc grad ogolsbee or whatever and save the big radical change for the area that he knows best: foreign policy. he majored in international relations, lived in a muslim country for a couple years and won the democratic primary almost exclusively because of his opposition to the iraq war. mark my words: within six months of jan 20, 2009, we will see a couple combat brigades coming home from iraq, talks between obama and the new iranian president (hopefully khatami or another moderate), and a retreat from the idiotic "afghanistan is the good war" idea and an acceptance of the fact that there are no military solutions to the insurgencies by bringing the taliban to afghanistan's "political process" (aka 2,000 k's of heroin for a governorship).

the world is a scary place... but a hell of a lot less scary than one with grandpa salty/palin running the show.

[Ben Kenobi]

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

[Issic]

I think Obama will win this coming election. The others simply don't offer anything promising.

[CupCake]

Ron Paul.